ALA Booklist

Rather than relocate with her dad and stepmother to Cleveland, 16-year-old April hatches a plan to move in with her friend Vi to finish the school year. April's dad agrees, but only because April carefully omits the fact that Vi's mother isn't living with her this year either. Hot-tub time! The predictable happens: parties, sex, and ill-advised purchases. But so do the more mundane elements of independent living, like dealing with an injured pet and floundering in the kitchen. When reality collides with living the parent-free dream, April finds herself lonely, rootless, and betrayed. Though the sexual escapades are never graphic, their consequences are, as April gets chlamydia from her boyfriend. The cautionary aspect of April's STD helps convey the complexity of safer sex while avoiding didactics. April and her crew prove that friends are the family you choose as they support each other in the absence of involved parents, and those 10 things April and Vi shouldn't have done lead to some hard-won wisdom.

Horn Book

Sixteen-year-old April moves in with a friend whose mother is traveling. Household tasks like running the dishwasher and cooking seem challenging, so April really finds herself in too deep when she gets a cat, throws a party, buys a hot tub, and has sex. In her quest for maturity and freedom, April's experiences, and their consequences, are by turns humorous and heart-rending.

Kirkus Reviews

A teenager discovers independence isn't all it's cracked up to be. When her self-involved parents split up and leave town, 16-year-old April maneuvers to stay behind in her hometown of Westport, Conn., with her friend Vi, whose mother is always on the road for work. With little preparation, she is thrown abruptly into the adult world of housekeeping and money management, with predictably disastrous results. April gets everything she thinks she wants well before she's actually able to handle it. As the title implies, April makes a series of poor decisions she eventually regrets when she finds herself mired in the consequences of her choices. Mlynowski deals sensitively with the pitfalls of adolescence—self-esteem, sex, drinking—with fluid prose and judicious use of profanity, giving her characters credibility without making the dialogue sound forced. Her pitch-perfect rendering of the utter self-centeredness of the teen experience makes April's gradual awakening feel genuine. While chick-lit, this is far more thoughtful and funny than such standards as Gossip Girl or The A-List. Teen readers will respond to this entirely believable heroine as she navigates an at-times unbelievable situation. (Chick-lit. 14 & up)

School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up-While in bed with a boy, April, 16, wakes up to her cell phone ringing. She's busted as she hears her dad say, "We're almost to your place." Her father and his wife moved to Cleveland, allowing April to stay in Connecticut to finish her junior year. Supposedly she is staying with her friend, Vi, and her mother; however, Vi's mother is working on Broadway, leaving the girls alone. The teens create fake email addresses for the parents, who never meet, to communicate. This is only the beginning of the shenanigans. While alone, the girls spend money frivolously, have wild parties with alcohol, and lose their virginity. While their behavior might be typical of irresponsible teens who lack parental supervision, the adults in this novel are portrayed as beyond na&9;ve. The author makes a case for teens using birth control before having sex, and no one drinks and drives, but other bad choices are made while under the influence. Mlynowski has made an attempt to explain April's behavior by relaying short flashbacks. At times they interrupt the flow of the story. At the end of the novel, readers hope that the protagonist has grown from her experiences, but it is hard to tell how much she has been influenced. While adults may cringe, teens will be engrossed. Karen Alexander, Lake Fenton High School, Linden, MI